It's Sometimes Called Love
by kajidragonstar
Summary: A little Haruka and Michiru love story about Haruka's feelings when Michiru gets someone else....
1. Chapter 1

It's Sometimes Called Falling in Love.  
By Kajidragonstar  
  
Author's Note: Hiya minna-chan! Kaji here! Just wanted to let ya know that this is a 3-part story. Soo...here's the first part!  
  
She had always been strong. The only thoughts of her demise were for the cause.  
  
The cause. Heh. That's a joke.  
  
The cause was no more. Returning to normal life would have been good, had she chosen to lose her memories. Those nights with Michiru by the sea -- all those years of working up the courage to confess and then celebrate their love; those years she couldn't bear to lose. She was disillusioned when she thought that she could live with those memories. Memories of times when they both were happy.  
  
Michiru and I. There is no plural. Don't combine her with you.  
  
Memories was all she had now. Yesterday was all that filled her mind, because today was lonely and desolate. Today, she was a racer, but knowing that Michiru wasn't out in the stands killed the passion almost as fast as it shredded her heart. Michiru chose to forget, and Haruka didn't blame her. As Sailor Neptune, she had gone through so many trials... more than Haruka did as Sailor Uranus. Sailor Neptune had watched her friends being massacred and torn apart limb-by-limb as Sailor Uranus was unconscious. She could only take losing the Moon Princess so often... she could only take losing Uranus once. The final battle broke her.  
  
Haruka's thoughts returned back to the deep slashes on her wrists. She didn't hear the door being slammed in.  
  
I don't feel like I'm going to die... maybe I'm already dead.  
  
As her vision blurred and her breath slowed to a fatal hault, she couldn't will her hands to touch the face of her beloved one last time.  
  
~*~  
  
White. All she could see was white. Then, the white blur sharpened to curtains, sheets, an IV syringe, and a heart monitor chirping it's Monotone rhythm.  
  
"You're awake," a voice too familiar involuntarily whispered hoarsely.  
  
"Looks like it." Haruka's throat was dry. She looked around for liquid.  
  
"I hate you." The aquamarine-haired woman's cold statement was warmed by the tears that followed.  
  
"Why-why are you crying?"  
  
In between broken sobs, the woman stated:  
  
"You're stupid. Trying to commit suicide. You were supposed to be my friend. You're not supposed to leave like that."  
  
Not exactly knowing what the being was doing by her bed, or why she had called her a friend, she felt a tug at her heart knowing that she had caused the foreign woman's tears. Gently, in a new but strangely natural movement, Haruka gently directed the nymph's chin to where she could gently wipe away her tears.  
  
"Don't cry over me." The words sounded like a serenade, making the woman uncomfortable, because the open portals of her eyes became filtered, and her movements constricted. All this was just augmented by another unrecognizable figure hesitantly standing at the door.  
  
"Michiru, you ready to go to- Oh! Haruka's up." Her voice was less than joyful.  
  
Haruka felt a pang of jealousy and depression well up inside her, though she wasn't quite sure why.  
  
Michiru, that apparently being her name, abruptly got up, whispered something about returning later, and slipped out of the room, leaving Haruka to delve over her emotions.  
  
This only lasted a moment or two, however, because a face she could recognize entered the room. The eyes of the woman with deep green hair held an understanding of the feelings, knowing the reason. Haruka wished she knew.  
  
"There's no use in killing yourself for her." Setsuna said. "I know what it's like to watch the person you love be with another. Michiru is happy right now. That should make you happy too."  
  
"...What?"  
  
"There's no use in hiding your motives."  
  
"What motives? For what?"  
  
"You're in a hospital."  
  
"Yeah... why?"  
  
"...do you remember trying to commit suicide?"  
  
"...suicide?"  
  
Setsuna's eyes widened as she grasped the reality of the situation.  
  
"What do you remember about Michiru?"  
  
"She was that girl who was here just a second ago... the aquamarine-haired one, right?"  
  
"...you've forgotten."  
  
"What? Setsuna.. what are you talking about?"  
  
"Nothing. Here's your water."  
  
"But-"  
  
"Don't ask questions, Haruka... just drink."  
  
Haruka's emotions when Michiru's girlfriend walked into the room didn't fail to make her wince. When she and Michiru talked, the sense of familiarity was so natural, though the blonde didn't know quite why... but she knew one thing: she was falling in love with Michiru, encountering one thing she promised she'd never experience again: unrequited love.  
  
For hours she would ride on her motorcycle, trying to clear her head on why she was having forbidden emotions for this new woman, but she could never come up with a clearer explination than the feeling that there was a force drawing the blonde to her... greater than the tug of the wind upon her sleeves.  
  
At first, she disliked Michiru's girlfriend greater than anything, because she wanted to believe that Michiru and she could really be together. She boiled with anger every time Michiru cried over harsh words, but tried to keep any hint of her emotions to a minimum. These raging battles in her mind kept her awake until the early hours of the morning, trying to stop loving the beautiful Michiru. She pretended that she really was just joking when she complimented and worshiped Michiru more than friends do, saying with all her heart and a sarcastic tone that anyone would kill to be with her. In reality, the friendship was both her reason for living and the demise of her heart.  
  
Finally, in those wee hours, she wrote a letter to her... she read it to Setsuna, who had become her confident, and the crimson-eyed mature woman simply nodded with painful approval. This was all that was needed for Haruka to board her motorcycle and speed across the vast city towards Michiru's apartment.  
  
Haruka looked through the apartment window, and saw the reason that Michiru should never be told that the letter was for her: she was smiling happily chatting on the phone. She stood there watching her for a good hour before she remounted her motorcycle and sped off, dropping a trail of tears behind her. 


	2. Chapter 2

It's Sometimes Called Love.  
  
Hey, here's part 2 of this fanfic! Have fun, and don't forget to review, flames are allowed. Thanks!-Kajidragonstar  
  
My dearest sea...  
  
A seagull dove into the rolling ocean waves. Blue eyes couldn't help but admire the way the bird could look so graceful in the wind and sea. As it brought it's pray to the surface, Haruka felt a slight pang of sympathy for the fish; it was taken away from its mother sea.  
  
Why do I have to be so damn sensitive?  
  
Throbbing from her solitary's heart brought the sentiment that something was missing from this mood that had been occurring more frequently that usual, which was once or twice in a millennia. Her mind seemed to click into autopilot as her eyes faded into a scene of her captor's eyes meeting her with a love Haruka knew all too well. The lack of pain kept her in this reverie until their lips caressed one another in a joining that was nothing short of a cosmic explosion... but then-  
  
Damnitt.  
  
Haruka brought her fist down onto the dock- more precisely, on a piece of some broken champagne bottle from years past. Cold electric currents ran trenches on her spine, but she did not wince as she simply looked at the piece of glass lodged in a bloody plain for a few moments before retrieving a handkerchief- she couldn't remember how she came to possess it. The familiarity of the scene was decisively different but she recollected it vaguely being done somewhere before to her. As soon as the easily one inch shattered dagger was out of her palm and in the cloth, a painful loneness washed over her and she made a violent shower flowing from her eyes to the sea below.  
  
At that moment, Haruka would have died to be the one to make Michiru happy- to hold her in her arms for five minutes, or to have the water temptress wipe away her tears with a pure smile. Never before had the Aquarian needed someone so dearly- but the magnitude of aching was so familiar and expected that she was almost driven mad on that dock.  
  
If I just slide off... I won't have to battle with it anymore.  
  
Fatal thoughts made the deep canyons on her wrists pulsate with a grim reminder of times her memory had shut away.  
  
"I hate you."  
  
Never could have those words held so great a weight. The polarities of it were mind boggling enough, but it just fed the Haruka's hope that there could be love just as vast and deep in Michiru's heart for her. Before this hope was shot down by harsh reality, Haruka had boarded her motorcycle and was speeding back to the white house by the sea... home.  
  
~*~  
  
"Hi this the Kaioh and Kitsu residence. Please leave a message after the tone."  
  
They're out to dinner... just breathe... you don't have to do anything. Just leave the message. It's an innocent late coffee. Nothing to feel guilty about. You'll just tell her- oh Goddess, I need to sit down.  
  
After a good three hours, Haruka finally added the invitation the the couple's message machine. As soon as the connection broke, her mind raced feverishly to somehow get that message off the machine. Guilt and desperation filled every dendrite, partially because they had just moved in together, and partially because Haurka wasn't sure if she could avoid vomiting during her confession. Five minutes later, her dire schemes were interrupted by the mortal ring of the phone.  
  
"Hello?" Haruka's voice was too rushed.  
  
"Haruka?"  
  
Her heart stopped then raced faster than she had ever ran or driven before.  
  
"Hi, Mi-chi-ru." So much for smooth.  
  
"Um... what coffee house?"  
  
"...what...?"  
  
"Coffee. You just left a message.. I was in the shower."  
  
She desperately tried to force her mind away from the image of Michiru in the shower.  
  
"Erm.. yeah. The one on Main Street."  
  
"Okay. I'll meet you there in ten minutes?"  
  
"Yeah.. .okay... sure."  
  
"...okay. Bye."  
  
-Click-  
  
"....bye."  
  
She splashed her face with cold water to remove any sign of the tears, and was glad, for once, that Setsuna was out shopping. She desperately needed the silence to prepare her speech when the timing was right. She threw on a light jacket to block the wind, and sped off into the city.  
  
Slightly less than punctual, Michiru showed up five minutes late, but Haruka did not mention it and Michiru did not seem to have any desire to explain. The blonde could tell that she was tense, even through her frenzy of trying to keep her hand on the coffee cup and her stomach in her belly. Until the coffee cups were empty, not a word was spoken between them.  
  
"I had better head home."  
  
Haruka knew that 'home' was the last place Michiru wanted to be at the moment.  
  
Maybe this isn't right.  
  
"I'll give you a ride."  
  
"No.. that's alright. I can defend myself on the subway."  
  
"Then I'll ride with you."  
  
"No!" Michiru quietly snapped. "I like to walk alone."  
  
Submissive silence followed Michiru to the subway station, but as soon as she had disappeared from the racer's sight, Haruka found herself running after her.  
  
She caught a glimpse of her walking down to the eastbound train, the exact opposite of the way to her house. Haruka, from a bit of hertle training, jumped over the turn gates and ran as fast as her legs could carry her to her soul reason for living.  
  
"Michiru!" she cried above the screeching of the breaks and people roaring. The aquamarine jerked back off the train as if the blonde's voice was a string that was around her waist.  
  
Panting as she caught up to her, Michiru couldn't help but giggle at the blonde's bed ruffled appearance, but the lightness of her laugh stopped when she saw the desperation in her eyes.  
  
"I... have... to... tell you.. something..." she breathed out roughly.  
  
"...okay."  
  
Fighting to retain composition, Haruka took in a deep breath:  
  
"I don't like your girlfriend." That wasn't exactly supposed to be the opening line...  
  
"..."  
  
Now or never.  
  
"I don't like her because she hurts you more than she helps. I don't like her because she made you cry today and all the other days. I don't like her because she doesn't trust you and she doesn't try not to hurt you."  
  
"Haruka, I-"  
  
"But most of all, I don't like her because she's with you... and I know I could make you happier than she could."  
  
"What are you saying?"  
  
"What I'm saying is... that over the last month and a half... ever since I saw you when I woke up... I've been falling in love with you. You're the reason I exist and die. You mean more to me than anything in this world. I don't know if I'm meant to love you, but I do know that I will never love someone else as deeply and sincerely as I love you. You're my other half.. my missing piece. What I'm saying is... no, more like asking you... is if you love me too."  
  
The aqua-haired goddess looked away at empty space for a long eternity before whispering:  
  
"I can't, Haruka."  
  
The weakness in her voice created doubt in the blonde's mind.  
  
"Look at me and say it."  
  
Her blue eyes were hallow and blank, and Haruka knew at that moment she couldn't do anything more than walk away. She didn't even need to hear Michiru say coldly and distantly  
  
"I can't love you."  
  
The metal cylinder carried her love away then, brushing a warm breeze that stung Haruka's eyes with tears. So many emotions spread through her at once: betrayl, rage, pain, passion, love, lust, desperation, desire, hopelessness. Then she flipped the light switch off and she felt nothing. All she consisted of was bones, muscle, flesh and impulse. She walked mechanically up to her motor cycle, didn't think as she turned the ignition and sped off into the night. She didn't want to see anything.  
  
~*~  
  
Setsuna knew what the phone ring held. She knew there was nothing she could do. Without answering the phone, she picked up the keys and drove to the hospital.  
  
It took all the time senshi's control to not kill Michiru when she saw her sitting by her bedside. All the crimson-eyed woman wanted to do was wipe that stream of tears off of the naive girl's face. Self-control kept her in the chair in the corner of the room, hidden by the curtain, listening to Michiru's heart wrenching words that turned Setsuna's rage into overpowering grief. She knew the words exchanged between the two before Michiru boarded the subway. She knew the ex-sea-senshi still loved her partner dearly, though she never knew she loved her before they met for the second time. It wasn't supposed to be this way, but Haruka's attemptive suicide was only stopped by her forgetting that she loved her. In the end, Haruka would still die out of love for Michiru, but the aqua-haired girl could never know this, though she would loved Haruka just as much. It was a miracle that Haruka had even survived her suicide, but there were no miracles left for the wind senshi.  
  
She said 'can't', Haruka... you idiot. She didn't say 'don't'.  
  
The bleeps of Haruka's tired heart joined into a drowning flat tone.  
  
~*~  
  
One afternoon two weeks earlier, Haruka and Michiru had been talking lightly when Michiru, with all the sincerity in her, asked her conversation partner:  
  
"Hey, Haruka?"  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"What do you want more than anything?"  
  
"To be here with the one goddess who I love more than anything in the world... you."  
  
Blue eyes didn't stray despite of the furious blush that rose from the usually pale cheeks. Michiru knew then that Haruka loved her too, and hoped that there would come a day soon when she wouldn't have to keep a table in between them. 


End file.
